Were the Cops in the Freddie Gray Case Charged Too Quickly or Too Much?

Law professors worry that fear of riots could compromise justice.

This morning I noted that the dispute about whether Freddie Gray's knife was banned by a Baltimore ordinance will make it hard to prove that the officers who arrested him lacked probable cause and are therefore guilty of false imprisonment. Another count that Marilyn Mosby, the state's attorney for Baltimore, may have trouble with is the second-degree "depraved heart" murder charge against Officer Caesar Goodson, who drove the police van in which Gray was fatally injured. Mosby alleges that Gray "suffered a severe and critical neck injury as a result of being handcuffed, shackled by his feet, and unrestrained inside the BPD wagon." To convict Goodson of second-degree murder, which carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison, she has to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that his actions "created a very high risk" to Gray's life and that he acted "with extreme disregard" of that risk. That may be a stretch, even if she can show that Goodson deliberately gave Gray a rough ride, since such treatment rarely has fatal consequences.

Another charge Goodson faces, involuntary manslaughter, is easier to prove, since it includes deaths caused by negligence, an unlawful act (other than a felony), or failure to perform a legal duty. Based on Mosby's allegations, that charge, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, also seems appropriate for Lt. Brian Rice, Officer William Porter, and Sgt. Alicia White, who are accused of repeatedly failing to belt Gray in and repeatedly failing to help him when it became clear he needed medical attention. Their alleged inaction may very well have amounted to negligence or failure to perform a legal duty.

In an interview with The Atlantic, University of Baltimore law professor David Jaros, a former criminal defense attorney who studies police abuse, says "it looks little bit like [Mosby] overreached" in charging Goodson with second-degree murder. But he adds that overcharging is a common, if regrettable, practice:

I love how surprised people are by the fact that a prosecutor may have overcharged. This is something prosecutors do all the time, as a strategic choice, for various reasons, and it's ironic that suddenly the [Fraternal Order of Police] is up in arms over this….

On a lower misdemeanor, they might throw in a charge of felony assault when it's really a misdemeanor assault, because they know that this going to go through a plea-bargaining process. It's also true that juries sometimes compromise, so if they're going to compromise, you stake out a strong position and then you settle for what you thought was appropriate in the first place.

Jaros also agrees it's reasonable to worry that Mosby—who filed charges just a day after police completed their investigation and who declared, in the wake of last week's rioting, "I heard your call for 'no justice, no peace'"—may have acted hastily for political reasons:

I think there are once again serious reasons to be concerned about the political pressure to come out quickly and charge very serious crimes because there was a very real interest in calming the city. We don't want those political interests to affect the prosecution of an individual defendant and their constitutional rights and what's going to happen to them. At the same time, that's what happens in tons of other cases.

To be clear: Jaros is not saying that politically motivated prosecutions or verdicts are good but rather that "we should have that concern in every case," not just in cases where the defendants are police officers.

Another defense attorney, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, expresses similar concerns more forcefully in a Boston Globeop-ed piece:

No decision on charges should ever be made on the basis of satisfying the demands of demonstrators or under the threat of violent demonstrations. Crowd control is not a proper component of prosecutorial discretion and is inconsistent with due process. Prosecutorial discretion should be exercised on the basis of an objective application of the law to the facts and not on the basis of the impact it may have on the crowd….

No one can know for certain what motivated Mosby to charge six police officers with crimes ranging from second-degree murder to manslaughter to assault, in the unnecessary death of Freddie Gray. Perhaps she knows facts that justify these serious charges, though it is difficult to square her description of the timeline with the "depraved heart" murder charge against the driver of the van. But the appearance of crowd influence flows inexorably from her ill-chosen words, and the appearance of injustice must be avoided as studiously as the reality of injustice if our legal system is to maintain its credibility.

Dershowitz also worries that even if Mosby fails to prove her case, jurors who live in Baltimore will be reluctant to acquit the officers because they are afraid of provoking fresh riots. He considers that "a strong argument" for holding the trials elsewhere.

These are indeed valid concerns, although it is worth noting (as Jaros does) that in cases where police are accused of abuse the biases typically run in the opposite direction. Local prosecutors tend to be cozy with local police, and even when they decide to pursue charges they face jurors who are inclined to view cops as the good guys. Generally speaking, police officers get a much bigger benefit of the doubt than ordinary citizens do in our criminal justice system, which is one reason the charges Mosby announced were so startling.

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I am glad to be corrected by someone who has reviewed the evidence. It is to such a person I presume I am speaking, because I know that someone with only a vague idea of the evidence would not be going around accusing other people of ignorance.

It is far more important to make sure that the King’s men are at least held to the same standard as the Mundanes they daily arrest, beat, coerce, harass, rape and rob than it is to be worried about the mob baying for their blood.

You think if I made a citizens arrest of questionable legality, beat the crap out of the guy, put him in the back of my van, and then drove around for a while instead of taking him right to the police station while he was injured and not seat belted and he just woopsy-daisy-like happened to be fatally injured when I finally decided to turn him over to the jailers, I wouldn’t be charged with a capital crime, and told that if I pled guilty I might get away with only 10 years of ass rape?

Wow, you sure refuted the GKC in your head who denied that the system generally shows favoritism toward cops!

Of course, I was suggesting that maybe *in this particular instance* the favoritism seems to be going the other way, with the pressure from the mob and the media outweighing the usual counter-pressure from the FOPs and other establishment fixtures.

The system has all sorts of biases – usually this means a bias in favor of its own members, obviously. But there are circumstances when countervailing biases can come into effect – like a bias in favor of appeasing angry mobs – a very real bias, as we’re learning in so many contexts.

still, in this case, the countervailing bias means they are getting treated just like I would get treated if I did the same thing and the DA didn’t like me. So my miniature violin is playing as loud as it can.

Her motivation will be clear when she runs for mayor on the back of this (inevitably failed) prosecution. Her announcement of the charges doubled as the start of her campaign. Unfortunately, it’s now doubtful there’s any hope of knowing what actually happened, which officer(s) did what to the man to cause his death.

It’s now a circus, and she’s handed plenty of talking points to anyone who wants to bury his head in the sand about the problem of police abuse.

These are indeed valid concerns, although it is worth noting (as Jaros does) that in cases where police are accused of abuse the biases typically run in the opposite direction.

That is because good help is always hard to find….

I love how surprised people are by the fact that a prosecutor may have overcharged. This is something prosecutors do all the time, as a strategic choice[…]

… or because they’re evil.

“You stand here accused of murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, sexual assault, illegal sexual acts, bestiality, blasphemy and heresy. What say you regarding these charges?” “Uh… what? Bestiality? What’s that?” “You just entered a plea of guilty of all charges except bestiality. Bailiff, take him out to the yard to be shot tomorrow at dawn.”

Dershowitz is correct. It’s obvious that she rushed to satisfy the mob. They even named some of the wrong people in the arrest warrants, leading police to go to homes of different people with similar names. What a circus.

Goddamn squirrels – I was gonna make a comment about the airport bars charging what the market will bear. A tightly controlled, government regulated market, which sells concessions to the highest bidder.

Prosecutors routinely overcharge citizens, and law professors do not flock to the parapets to protest. I am trying to be optimistic about this one, for some reason. Charges can be amended prior to trial, can they not? How can the driver NOT be charged with depraved indifference? Just because he failed to kill any of his other victims? That’s ridiculous.

My wife was actually best friends with the von Bulow daughter, when they were both in grade school, long before the Mom went into the coma. She often sat for meals with the whole family and said Klaus was always very kind to her. When the trouble started the von Bulow kid dropped out of school and she never saw her again.

Uh huh. Perfectly healthy guy goes into a van. When he comes out, his spine is nearly severed. Even if there is a non-malicious explanation for it, I don’t give a shit. If you as a cab driver delivered your fare to their destination with a severed spine, would you expect to not be investigated as to what happened? So what about when cops are literally abducting people on the street for running from them and possibly even giving “nickel rides”? Have they no need to feel that their actions can be scrutinized, especially when somehow a guy got his spine severed and died?!? In their care?!?

He is incapable of having a discussion with anyone with an opposing viewpoint without portraying them as sub humans. Watching some of the otherwise rational people around here kiss his ass boggles the mind.

True, that could be a motive, but that doesn’t mean the statement is untrue. I think it’s accurate and somewhat worrisome that there are lots of pro-jihad messages in the US. The “Oh, it’s just people talking” dismissal is small comfort.

AFAIK, the “spine nearly severed” detail comes only from an attorney for Gray’s family. There always seems to be a lot of early bad information regarding these political hot-button cases. Remember what many people thought they knew for sure about Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown? Remember the b.s. from their family attorneys?

Of course the death is suspicious and they should investigate. I’m not defending or excusing the cops involved, I’m just withholding judgment until more facts come out.

Why don’t we hear about the arresting cop and lead officer in the case, the one Freddie Gray ran from? The police Lt. has a record of involuntary civil commitment, having his duty and personal weapons confiscated, threatening family members and a fellow officer with a firearm,suicide threats and a bunch of unknown other shit that is redacted or sealed based on “personnel rules, union rules and medical privacy”.

The fuck you say. I had a friend get a concussion from the car hittingone rock. Rough rides can result in serious injuries. And why was the ride “rough” to begin with? Cops should be trained in avoiding those type of injuries.

It’s the only smart move (unfortunately). She gets cred with the populace for bringing the charges (and therefore possibly starting a political career), and then when she blows the case she can go to the police union and go “I botched that on purpose. I have your support now, right?”

She wins both ways in that case. I can’t see her doing anything else unless she actually has integrity. You can stop laughing now. Really. Stop it!

But the appearance of crowd influence flows inexorably from her ill-chosen words, and the appearance of injustice must be avoided as studiously as the reality of injustice if our legal system is to maintain its credibility.

Yeah, right. Get back to me when those cops have been executed without trial.

Crowd control is not a proper component of prosecutorial discretion and is inconsistent with due process.

Is Dershowitz not aware that the job of “prosecutor” is a political job?

A prosecutor, being a politician at heart, will do whatever she thinks is best for her political career at the moment she makes a decision. It could turn out to be a horribly bad choice for her political career in a matter of hours, or a matter of weeks, but it is always a politically-motivated decision. Due Process is an afterthought if it is a thought at all.

Yes, but they are not supposed to. At least in PA prosecutors have several ethical obligations above and beyond regular attorneys. Of course, Maryland is below the Mason-Dixon line, so who know what applies there.

Local prosecutors tend to be cozy with local police, and even when they decide to pursue charges they face jurors who are inclined to view cops as the good guys.

Orange County DA Tony Rackauckas didn’t seem to pull any punches in his offices’ prosecution of of the POs involved in the beating-to-death of Kelly Thomas. Rackaukas was a guest on the local John & Ken radio show when he was specifically asked whether or not he’d put the first string in the courtroom to prosecute the case. “Yes”, and he did, AKIK.

It is possible for a DA to do everything right and still come up empty. Why is that?

For argument’s sake, there are a lot taxpayers (and jurors) who don’t want to end up being the defendant to a lawsuit against themselves. So what if the cops who beat Kelly Thomas to death (this is uncontroversial) were found guilty on murder and other crimes. Next would be a civil lawsuit with the City of Fullerton and its taxpayers on the hook. The cops are screwed, but they are not on a financial hook.

The nature of the system( better to let ten guilty men go free blah blah blah) + the deference that many people still inexplicably have for cops+ a shit load of uniform cops staring down the jury during trial.

Neither, they weren’t charged quickly enough or harshly enough… Premeditated murder is a capital offense. The fact that the feral scum are escaping the death penalty just shows there is one rule for the cops and quite another for the peons.

The so called “justice” system is a farce and only believed in by the mentally challenged.

I feel sorry for cops across the country who, because of the debacle in Ferguson, are now on notice that prosecutors will be somewhat more aggressive and speedy in charging them when it seems like they murdered people. Victims of political necessity, man that sucks. I feel sorry for anyone who has the misfortune of interacting with state law enforcement.

Noted and approved. But, Tony, my love. How does this square with your Marxist appreciation of unions? Police unions may be at their height of power at this time in the open society. Very few unions enjoy what the police lobby enjoys. It is literally mafia orgasmico over parmesean and slivers of olive-oil roasted egg-plant, man.

Well, fuck you and other libertarians who are attempting to parlay this issue into one of your corporate cocksucking fixations. That’s what I think of that.

You did this. You are your fellow corporate cocksucking travelers insisted that lowering taxes was the absolute most urgent matter of basic justice in the universe. For that we get local and state governments getting funds by adopting a policy of police harassment and shakedowns. The way cops behave is exactly how you’d expect if something went awry in motivations for determining their role in society. Cop unions protect cops. What a fucking revelation.

Libertarians will remain completely useless so long as they are distracted from all the many real problems of injustice and government abuse in this country because a fat man has polluted their little brains with the notion that the only real problem is “progs” and unions and the other enemies of the corporate parasites pulling their puppet strings.

You just blamed “progs” for this problem–a ludicrous notion. Others are escaping to their irrelevant anti-union bullshit. That’s when most of the peasants can’t help but blame the black victims, because, you know. C- for cop hate. If you don’t know what the underlying problems are, then what use is it?

In other words you’ve come up short. Your taking points re: the progressive utopia that is inner-city Baltimore are just mewling pathetically about Trotskies in your midst. The day Tony finally ran out of excuses. This is beautiful, I need a moment.

Just what do you think more revenue would solve? More handouts? More dependence? Finally, after all these years, fully tearing apart the social fabric so that those malleable poor people you’ve propped up all these years on the backs of taxpayers might be rebuilt in the mold of the perfect progressive foot soldier, the new man of Tony’s socialist empire?

Or maybe bumping up by a few percentage points the bennies your public sector unions enjoy, which of course is where additional revenue will go.

May as well have! Apparently, withholding heroin from an addict would make you an accessory to murder if the withdrawals kill him. By Tony’s logic your moral obligation is to stick in the needle for him.

And yet it’s never enough. Nor will it ever be. They’ll have burned down the city around themselves, empty of either businesses or residents, all the while continuing to insist they couldn’t afford to supply basic social services.

His position is: if we don’t get to steal your money the “nice and clean way” with the IRS backed up with guns, the cops will steal from you the “hard way” backed up with guns. Because, like, society neeeeds to steal your shit, maaaan

Cops in this quasi sorta free example of whateva the fuck are just following the tune of the nkvd; The purist amaze government prototypical socialist gun giants. Unionists buckling on guns and torture under communist/socialist regimes since the Bolsheviks had no capitalist to blame, love.

Your F.O.P. can’t fucking set a better example of improved interaction with fucking humans because of some whore capitalists? Are you fucking serious, Tony?

Your unionized motherfuckers with the guns have the BEST and most OPTIMAL opportunity to show the rest of the America that the BEST can be experienced around progressive collective culture. YET. It is a fucking total fail- across the goddam board. And I’m not even anti-fucking-union. I’m anti-fucking massive government structures without boundaries, account-fuck-abilities, and intellectual empathy.

I’ve actually wondered if Tony and Buttplug aren’t just Nick and Matt trying to drive up page views by engaging in the most vapid and mendacious arguments possible to bait the commentariat into replying.

Soldier, come unto my American army to fight for all ‘we hold dear’. While I fucking gigantic laugh blizzard lightning fails right into your fucking dumb young face. Grow your fucking brain zest. Get killed and maimed for all we ‘hold dear’? An America of ‘all we hold dear’ where the constitution and bill of rights is being treated to an array of torturous bendings and breakings? Where analogous devices flown in from darkened ages afflict the legend of liberty into birthing the deflated and bowing subject? Where law is ruled and snapped like a jagged edge against the resisting and deviant? Where even conservative minds (Fuck you, you miserable spit cannon, Levin) fly into rages blinded by their fucking blood-infused hatred of classes they fail to comprehend?

Fuck it. The constitution is maligned and misappropriated and misinterpreted and mis-everything. Fuck it all.

All Leftist and rightist rags have slim edges that are appropriate to the Libertarian math, man. Even Vox. The bizarre thing about resembling whatever the fuck a Libertarian is is that a lot of rags have these smarmy shitty bullshit pluggings that are fucking rooted in political faiths. “We must trust the special arm of the councils”, cry the left and right-winging lostalicons. Lost people. These are the lostalicons. Lostalicons flow from the right and left. The right consists of the supra-religious conservative DECRYING a country headed into the goddamned ABYSS of moral decay and the left consists of the supra-skeered progressive worried that the universe is going to smash their fucking bodies with UV rays because sumbitch burnt some garbage in the backyard.

Winds of the stones, I breath familiar ghosts. The giants oaken knights of the templed valleys and flagged cities brimming with those seeking ships into the great starry beyound draw me. So, I sit on this rocket port this eve with friends because I am drawn to the binary deviants of a listless world. My fucking limbs are found nowhere else at this moment. Am I a libertarian? I am the light and silken and barely noticeable shadow of all libertarians. A lover of the fighting freedoms. A cherokee ninja flitting amoungst the verbs and nouns and adjectives.

Ironically, that actually somewhat reflects a plotline in Neal Asher’s The Owner series. The Mars research colony of course has a political officer and political goons to maintain control (Asher is virulently anti-government in this series and really rips into where a lot of government is headed; it’s not pretty).

Winding stones of the ton villages, a Hillary victory can be absorbed easily in this fucking thing called America. Hillary will not fuck with as much as the Windstorms of Stonages thinks. Hillary will be irritating. Constantly defensive. But she won’t fuck with shit as much we all think. Carter will have been far worse. Hillary understands big business and her own shiny controllable pool of knee-jerking fucktarts on the climate side. She isn’t great for fucking goddamn America but Ben fucking Carson is way worse and so is Huckabee.

Holy shit balls. Did I just read from Tony that this is all the libertarian’s fault?

Holy shit. Libertarians have been at the forefront fighting police and judicial corruption. For fuck sakes Reason Magazine and Hit/Run have a shit ton of exposes on how the criminal justice system is fucking over the common man and you have the audacity to blame this on us?

Someone should create an app that replaces all of Tony’s posts with “I am incapable of rational argument and my brain stopped evolving in the 7th grade.” It would hardly change anything since that’s what I get out of them anyway.

It’s like reading a Leninist tract from 1915 only the writing is worse and Tony knows less about history and literature than Uncle Vlad did.

Tony just made remember this: The Typical Libertarian is hated by conservatives because he wants the freedom to snort coke off a teenaged hookers ass while smoking pot and watching a movie full of boobies and cuss words in preparation for sodomizing his illegal immigrant housekeeper, Carlos. The Typical Libertarian also wants criminals, terrorists and Mexicans to roam freely about causing all manner of social chaos, and has no interest in forcing people to love Jesus Christ. The Typical Libertarian is a traitor to the GOP and America because he failed to support the war in Iraq, the PATRIOT Act, the Stimulus, and both Bush and McCain, despite the fact that both men once said something at a cocktail party about maybe possibly lowering taxes on some people some day.

The Typical Libertarian is hated by liberals because he is a crypto-archconservative who wants poor people to go without education, medical care, police protection, food, shelter, and oxygen. The Typical Libertarian spends his weekends running down endangered species in his monstrous, gas-guzzling SUV before stopping off to smoke a pack of cigarettes in a daycare. The Typical Libertarian wants the world to be run by unaccountable multinational conglomerates instead of unaccountable governments. The Typical Libertarian is a racist, sexist, profit-driven nihilist who failed to mark the ascendance of the Chosen One, and has never protested for Union rights nor worn a T-shirt with the word Darfur on it.

Despite clinging to a hopelessly unworkable, idealistic and marginal political philosophy, the Typical Libertarian has recently been discovered as the cause for the downfall of Western Civilization.

Holy crap. I missed a good day. Abolishing the family, hate speech isn’t free speech, The Hildebeast, plenty of Tony and shreek retardedness, secret police forces and Obumbles mastery of the empty phrase.

Damn work.

I especially like the two turdknockers who want to abolish the family. That is the finest example of demoralization I have ever seen. Turning reality and common sense completely on their heads and inside out. Someone should laugh at them and then kick their fucking teeth out.

There are too many people now who were not even born when the USSR fell. Peru elected a communist for president and he totally fucked everything up, I mean created a real clusterfuck of epic proportion. Then he sat out and waited 20+ years and ran again. Most of the voters were not alive when he was in the first time and the rest forgot, so, he won again. I am too lazy to look him up.

A lot of libertarians seem to think that the left has “sold-out” on war and civil liberties. Which is bullshit since they only had those views as a means to gain power. Need I point out that the “Left” originally referred to the likes of the Jacobins and enrages who supported war and the executions of the their opponents?

And then we had the 2008 melt-down which proved the ‘free market’ was a failure! (After the market had been distorted beyond recognition by gov’t fuck ups, but no one on the left wants to admit that. Hey, we were down ten runs with two out in the bottom of the ninth, and the vaunted ‘free market’ didn’t save our ass!)

Every country? Hardly. Canada moved away from socialism and so did much of Latin America. Things went sideways in the 2000s. The Great Recession arrested the statist degeneration and now we’re in a weird limbo.

Reason was also hopeful that Obama would be the aisle-crossing saviour who would potentially bring about a newer, saner political era.

I know, right?

But if you’d prefer a violently cynical mag that was a reverse mirror image of Salon – basically, nonstop partisan vituperation – i’m sure there’s one out there somewhere. They will probably always err on the side of always believing we’re on the cusp of the Libertarian Moment. Its a story that keeps on giving.

I’m trying to be more polite lately. Its not working. (or i’m just terrible at it)

I again asked for an example, after pointing out that Hillary’s most recent activity was “opposition to the TPP” – hardly “corporatist” as i understand it – and they went off on the below tizzy =

“because politicians never change their positions and contradict their past behavior when it suits their campaign prospects. yeah that is so odd and unusual, why would she conveniently veer left all of a sudden if she wasnt genuine about it? what could she possibly gain from that other than the largest voting demographic in the country? youre fucking retarded mate, whatever your alleged “profession” is is irrelevant . do your own research on her. the woman is a sellout, its on tape, she is not presidential material like her husband was. so which word is it you dont understand? do i need to define shill for you, corporatist? or both? im telling you man google is your best friend for these sorts of brain farts.?”

I know what you mean. If you try talking to them, you come away realizing this is about something entirely different than the actual politics and policies involved. It’s…personal. Emotional. Utterly irrational. The players and TEAMs and policy issues are all just stand-ins for something else in their psyche.

The Dems are not happy with the Hildebeast. I suspect in their hearts they feel she is not far left enough for them despite her windsock statements to that effect. I don’t think they believe her. They want Warren and I hear that moves are being made in that direction. This despite Warren being just as much of a lying con and ‘corporatist shill’ as Cankles.

God, the left really doesn’t have anyone that is not an absolutely horrible person.

But calling her ‘corporatist shill’… i wondered = what do they even mean by that?

Is she out breaking ground on new Walmart locations in the Alaskan Wildlife Preserve? Is she insisting that we deregulate the pharma industry and allow drug testing on prisoners? Is she doing Coke Commercials on the campaign trail? I simply don’t know what these people consider “shilling” when it comes to Hillary. last i checked.

“The Lord wants to suck my dick in high school and I want him to pay me a box of orange push pops and he won’t and I’m pissed off”

“I lost my box of old squirrels. They were dead and that fucking retard down the goddamn street stole my fucking squirrles but he owns brass knickles so I will be a pussy and not get my box of old squirrels”

“I graduated high school under a curse from the street of midgets. My Windstromalorious penis was orange forever until I got a goddamn jesus chick to suck all the orange out”

What makes an asshole American? Is American an appropriatus term? Is this thing American a codified distinct thing? What the FUCK is an American aside from all the fucking skeletons lined with skin mesh in all the cities?

Your throat is throbbing the fucktunes like a ghetto wharf ocean slapping fuckin mountains and oceans on the living arenas, man… your antlers are moose god bull ivory ufo. Man. I think that is a god ivory. Period. the sky turned purple and you smashed onto the planet with various angles and spectrums and none of that is describaliziouso.

What no one has noticed is the prosecutor charged some of the police with false arrest because the knife was legal under Maryland law. If the knife was illegal under Baltimore law, couldn’t she be charged with the same thing because she arrested the police officers illegally?

Very few people seem to understand a fucking switchblade. Very few switchblades on the street CLIP on a jean pocket. The fucking point of switchblade in NOT to be clipped. Switchblades, the which I own several and who gives a motherfucking fuck since I exist in the trees here….

My view? The fucking union shit stains have procreated the sprung-metal backstop on a normal walmart sold blade to be a morphable ‘spring’. Hence, terms are being invented by the Baltimore Police Thugs.com.

Poor ass nigger can’t afford shit like that, Knight Gilmatorius. Man, this is the fucking goddamn brick shits. The fucking tired oxygen-robbing ghett’s. Dude, got that shit from his dead grandpa. No FUCKINg shit I’m about to stab you with will be worn with a visible clip, period. And I grew up in ghetto Toledo.. and I DID carry a switchblade. I carried a butterfly switch to high school because I feared for my life. I am excellent with a butterfly switch even at this FUCKING age. FUCK age. I can switch a butterfly blade really well… I suck at mahcine guns… i am better at knife…

Of course not. police have qualified immunity; prosecutors have absolute immunity. I recall one story of a prosecutor who couldn’t be sued over actually framing a guy, since he was acting as a prosecutor. Beyond that, the prosecutor didn’t literally arrest anyone; other cops did, on her behalf.

President Bill Clinton on Wednesday conceded that over-incarceration in the United States stems in part from policies passed under his administration.

Clinton signed into law an omnibus crime bill in 1994 that included the federal “three strikes” provision, mandating life sentences for criminals convicted of a violent felony after two or more prior convictions, including drug crimes. On Wednesday, Clinton acknowledged that policy’s role in over-incarceration in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

“The problem is the way it was written and implemented is we cast too wide a net and we had too many people in prison,” Clinton said Wednesday. “And we wound up…putting so many people in prison that there wasn’t enough money left to educate them, train them for new jobs and increase the chances when they came out so they could live productive lives.”

Clinton’s comments come on the heels of protests in Baltimore over policing and the death of a young black man there and a week after Hillary Clinton delivered one of the first policy addressees of her presidential campaign on criminal justice reform, saying that the system focuses too much on incarceration.

Nah, He’s a sordid literal shitdump from all the millions of hellish murdering devils haunting the suburbs hanging and stabbing kids with screwdrivers. A true Al Fish gastro spew. A fucking empty-hearted filth blizzard. You don’t send millions of Americans into the prisons and eat crumpets in Naples. You fucking rotting cankered braindead quasi-human. I hate you with a billion broken dictionaries- words never found and lost and discovered, you pasty southern whore hole of human fuck, Bill Clinton.

Planet Libertopia was found on the fucking remix of galaxies and these bitches found a rockets into the arc and sine of lost energy and found radiance and over all these trips and sights a bunch of this fucks founded a nappy planet with the fucking congenial ozone and various multifuckin limbed cows running the hills… and all.. so yea…. fuck me… man

I have been ticking through my histories. I have been allergic to cold!. I must, probably, bid adieu to the blue swirling of connectedness that is the Indian’s revenge. I will be grumpy. And everyone will endure it. But my eyes will no longer hate me.

reason minds are dope… dope should be legal.. should thes e fuckin dopes be illegal ,,,wait… if humans are dope and I do this shit on my nose and i get high on Huckabee… Huckabee, jesus freak monster paw tank fuck killer citizen boot if i get high on yo huckabee coke will what where what the fucking fuck white ass fuckbith bonkey….

The American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), sponsor of the Sunday night event, gave Fawstin, a Bronx, New York-born, former Muslim, $12,500 in prize money and introduced him to the crowd as a courageous and righteous man.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which includes AFDI on its annual list of U.S. hate groups, plans to add Fawstin to its 2016 report, Heidi Beirich, director of the tracking effort, told Reuters on Monday.

Former Muslim criticizes his ex-religion, almost gets assassinated for it, ends up on SPLC ‘hate list.’ Fuck those gutless eunuchs.

Incidentally, I have no particular reason to want to defend Fawstin either given that he doesn’t appear particularly libertarian. It just strikes me as a bit distasteful to add someone to a ‘hate list’ for criticizing his former religion three days after he was almost murdered.

Yes, and I find it interesting – not surprising, not interesting – to see people avowing that the Objectivist Geller (and now the Objectivist Fawstin, I guess) are ickier and less hero-er than the Charlie Hebdo people, who unless I very much miss my guess are left-wing French people.

I’ve been of the view that neither of the “victims” (or intended victims) matter.

I never felt very Je Suis-anything after the Charlie attack. and i never read a single one of their issues or browsed covers. I don’t really care who they were. they could have been making a magazine about Wicker Furniture, or purveying Monkey Porn for all i care.

Similarly, I’m not interested in the Geller character, and don’t know why its even relevant to the story. They could have been having a cartoon-contest for *anything*. Or maybe it could have been a pornographic puppet show, where mohommed is portrayed by a coconut. It could have been ‘dress a pig like the prophet’ convention. Whatever. It makes no difference.

The point is that insane people tried to mass-murder them. because they’re fucking insane and they think killing people is cool.

apparently other people see the issue differently. I could give a rat’s ass who Pam Geller is.

That’s my instinct – it simply set me off to see the je suis charlie stuff versus the distancing from Geller. If you’re going to honor one group in France as heroes, why not a similar group in America, which differs from the French group mainly in avoiding Charlie’s ridiculous moral-equivalence bashing of Christians and Jews.

Obviously, I’m not criticizing anyone who has the same attitude toward any and all murderous attacks regardless of the views of the victim. That’s my own instinct, as I said.

Another noteworthy instance of my being taken out of context was with respect to my view of the propensity of Muslims to become Jihadists, and how one should deal with self-described Muslims. Yes, I did say that I think it is possible for a Muslim to become a Jihadist. This is because, as I have learned in the research I did leading up to writing and drawing The Infidel, Islam prescribes Jihad as something its true believers should engage in, in order to spread Islam. What I discussed in the interview, which didn’t make it into the final segment, was my own attitude towards individual Muslims. I have family members who consider themselves Muslims with whom I am friendly, and I would certainly not conclude that your average Muslim is likely to become a Jihadist. They cut from the segment the following statement, which clearly distinguishes average Muslims from Islam’s consistent practitioners: “Your average Muslim is morally superior to Mohammed. They are individuals who may or may not be a problem. It’s Islam’s consistent practitioners, it’s organized Islam, that is the problem.” Obviously, this statement made me seem too reasonable (or maybe they thought it was too blasphemous) for it to be included in the segment.

Yes, Beirich, social justice demands that you dox a man who currently is dealing with some credible threats against his life and the life of his family. It must be so hard to be so righteous in this morally flawed world of ours, Beirich. I don’t know how you do it!

Not for the first time, the SPLC takes people who were targeted for murder and calls them haters.

Somehow, the media which cite SPLC don’t mention how a would-be assassin used an SPLC list to identify his target – the people of the Family Research Council. Because the media would have totally ignored a right-wing assassin choosing his targets from a right-wing org’s list.

I no longer use the term “cosmotarian,” but I think we should use the term “libertine-ian” to describe the sort of person who says Charle Hebdo staff are heroes beyond criticism while FRC and Geller are evil Illinois nazis whose rights we must hold our noses and support.

So this clouds are flowing likes the capes on 3 fronts and I am loving the voices of these sentences in these white steps man… just engage the wolf scream and lion scretch….. and tunnels of the thouhts are caught so my fingers are now escaped from my mind fuck… my mind is actually fucked up on drugs and booze but I found a space where I am fucked but I can get this space agents to type real shit and check this out, my fingers work fine but my brain is actually literally fucked byond belief man… you lovely bitches don’t even know man… so maye i can finger express while u i’ . /m tripping? look at this man…. those fucking beers on these places are lined up like vaginas for my mouth to enjoy all to make beer and cunts happy…. man … so… I am working at this…. fuck….cant concentrak…. fuck the fuk motherfukin FUCKUFIKCUKFUCKKUFKUFKUFKKUKCUKUCKUCCKCKUKUKUCKU

Ok so fuck that self cok sucker… see the inter philosophili? agile sucking agile cock cuz agile is pissed off at agile so yea this show s you can be fucked up like almost dead fucked up adn have discopline and i want to suck that dudes cick above called …. why what the fuck yea I wil suck my own coke….

so these places are a meadow into the smooth tenders tupo…. my fucking mouth is watering see look I can type super fucked up shit I need to see how many words i can typ fucked up….

WTF is the point of the state if it can’t even defend the property of its citizens. Baltimore should disband its police force and offer store owners tax credits with which to purchase Blackwater operatives.

Pope hatchets smash red butt skills… man those pope children brains smash into galaxtio bass and volcanic vaginas… hatch pope is a lid into the ass of the newest pope and I want to crawl into pope ass and his fukin brain…. I want a hatch into life and popes and jesus and citys and fops….

In a remarkably tin-eared performance, the new mayor of Oakland attended a ‘fair’ intended to attract new businesses to Oakland about three days after the cops allowed rioters to prance up and down Oakland’s version of ‘auto row’; showroom and vehicle windows were randomly shattered and at least one car was torched. I’m sure businesses were standing in line to find out how to move to Oakland!

This is why I support substituting anarchotyranny for tyrannoanarchy. Corporate landowners would replace the gaggle of public institutions we refer to as “the state.” As economically self-interested managers, these corporations would eliminate threats to commerce at a minimum cost and decline to waste resources prosecuting victimless crimes. Agile Cyborg would be the new regime’s poet laureate.

It’s about time we libertarians admit that the West’s rash and treasonous experiment in democracy has been an abject failure. It has set in motion a nigh-unstoppable tidal wave of egalitarianism, socialism, feminism, and other PC nonsense. There may be no plausible solution, but expecting incremental reforms to do anything more than inconvenience the left’s relentless onslaught is shamefully naive.

I don’t really care if she over-charged, or she did it in the name of crowd control: when cops are using their power and the supposed respect we have for them (despite the numerous amount of cops like Serpico who have always pinpointed that cops don’t deserve as much respect as they are given), and are willing to protect their own, I see no reason why a rare prosecutor should flip the table around, most of them don’t, which is why they are acting like the constitution has been burned to ashes because a couple of their buddies got convicted; a rarity. Regardless, they will still get their just due day in courty, they will still manage to most likely use tax payer money to pay their bail money, and they will most likely get off with most stuff, because the people who we rely on to find justice when murders occur, do it a little differently, when the possible murderer is one of their own.

None. They run a profit making organization and are unapologetic about it. They, therefore, are to be despised. Frau Clinton, OTOH, having lied, destroyed evidence, accepted bribes, is to be celebrated, since she, uh, well…..

I wish the right would stop apologizing for having powerful backers. Someone should just tell the uppity little english majors at salon that they are fucking worthless in comparison to the Kochs of the world.

If we’re not too far into poetry this evening, I just thought I’d pass on a nugget of wisdom from an SF city supervisor. Now, SF has a ‘housing problem’, in that it costs a lot to live here. That’s a ‘problem’ to proggies; it’s a fact to those who are capable of thought. Regardless of whether it is a ‘problem’ of not, the high cost of housing is driven by the market in predictable patterns; it’s a beautiful place to live and there’s not much space. It is also driven by the SF city gov’t proggy policies regarding zoning, height and density regs, rent control and several others. So, what’s the solution?

“Campos wants moratorium on new housing in the Mission” “Calling the city’s housing policies a failure, Supervisor David Campos introduced legislation Tuesday to halt construction of market-rate housing in the Mission District. […] “The Mission is ultimately the Mission because of the people, and if we lose the people we lose the Mission,” Campos said in announcing the legislation at the Mission Neighborhood Center, surrounded by a dozen jostling preschoolers holding antieviction posters. “A moratorium gives the community a fighting chance.”http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/…..244209.php

I’m sure Tony or turd will enlighten us regarding how prohibiting ‘market rate’ housing will somehow make housing cheaper, but for the rest f us, it seems to be a mystery.

That’s not a monopoly of the left; the righties use the same with, oh, SSM. But there’s not doubt the left gets more mileage out of it. I happened to be driving by the Board of Ed (what a pathetic name) several months ago, and the teachers had 8-12YO kids lined up holding signs that were not the products of those kids. And later in the day, the TV news cameras showed what seemed to be hundreds by careful placement in front of a ‘crowd’ of 20 or so. Yuck.

I think all killings by police should automatically go before a judge; no grand jury should be needed.

Police have special privileges and rights, they usually are on paid leave while they go through the legal proceedings, so the usual protections that the grand jury is supposed to provide for private citizens against arbitrary prosecution by prosecutors need not apply.

After reading in Reason about an inquest in Montana, I was impressed – they require* a public inquest for people whose deaths are caused by police, so an advisory jury can recommend prosecution if the death is the cops’ fault.

*Unless the prosecutors files charges right away, so it wouldn’t be relevant to a case like in Baltimore.

Once again the Conservative Treehouse people seem to be doing the sort of detailed investigative reporting that the mainstream media is supposed to do. They did good work on the Michael Brown case long before the grand jury came to pretty much the same conclusions.

(Note: I am not endorsing any conclusions here, just linking. I watched the relevant parts of the videos, but didn’t see much to endorse any particular view, and of course these don’t cover whatever happened after the van left.)

In fact, there are theories that Freddie got arrested to create a pretext to be brought into the station. I’ve heard other theories that he may have tried to swallow an enormous amount of drugs to conceal them, and that contributed to the injury.

It doesn’t seem likely that Freddie would injure himself. You would have to be borderline insane to smash your head that hard to sever the spine. But it also seems unlikely that Goodwin drove the car so erratically that someone inside could actually die. Unless the guy was going 100 MPH and ran straight into a wall, or something.

There are lots of things about this case that doesn’t make sense. A drug dealer who packs a knife instead of heat?

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